A time capsule of the greatest financial mania in the history of mankind, told in real-time by regular folks and patriots. May future generations better understand the madness of crowds, and how power and money corrupt.

ok....First I grew up in a very nice home my family owned. Now my husband and I can not afford to own a home. We chose not to take that crazy arm loan when houses were completely OVER PRICED!!! We waited and Saved and Saved. Well our savings is gone due to Breast Cancer..We had insurance. Our credit is shot because of my illness. We have two small children. We have been renting the last eight years and its hell. We have to deal with landlords who don't care about their houses just the money coming in to pay their mortgage. We do not have any equity. We do not get any tax breaks. And guess what? We had to move 3 times in 3 years because our landlord raised our rent up 200.00 in one year and so on. Renting sucks....Just sucks. I know what happened in the realestate market is due to Greed. Thats it..Just greed. Its disgusting. Thanks to Bush We can not declare bankruptcy due to the face we make over 40,000 a year for a family of four. Well I don't know what tomorrow will bring. But I can't say I enjoy paying someone mortgage and knowing they could ask us to leave any time.I have kids who I don't want to move from school to school...It sucks to be a renter.

Yes we do fun stuff - I'm heading back to Zurich in Sept for a month - not going to roller blade down the mountains, but do some nice hikes through the Alps.

A breakthrough at dinner last night!. . .friends said, "you know, San Diego offers great rent value - we can live in a nice place at half the cost of owning!". . .these people own two places and are now renting - they plan to sell off the two places - paid for - and take the cash and put it out at 4% in 7 FDIC banks. . .better to get 4% than drop 5% in value a month.

1. You can try to glorify your existence by posting videos of insane people doing crazy/stupid things (a single poorly-timed car around a turn and that guy's dead...along with any one of 1001 other likely things out of his control), but almost noone does these things, so it fails. Why do you assume he's not a bored billionaire who owns "7 houses" or more? :P2. I "own" a home, I jump out of planes, I go down class-5 rivers, I'd jump off bridges but bungie-jumping in this country is virtually non-existent, I drag race, etc. How many of these things have you done Keith? ;)3. That video makes me wanna spend more time on my blades and bike - been so busy I haven't used either in the last year and a half...gradschool ftl!4. Rent or own, you need to spend more time at my URL - you might be less hostile, assuming you had someone to shop there with. ;)

There's nothing really wrong with renting at all, yea the lack of tax deductions and equity. But you leave out the bad parts of homeownership, when stuff breaks you are responsible for fixing it (this can get both very pricey and troublesome), if you move you have to sell your house, you have less flexibility in job options because it's harder to move.

If you can't afford to buy you'd be better off enjoying the life you have. Oh yea I know houses are the great american status symbol, but ... better to count what blessings you do have that bemoan what you don't. And yes the government has created this situation with housing, but that too is mostly out of your control.